What Stops Donors Giving To Charity?

Before you can encourage supporters to fund-raise for your cause you need to understand not only what motivates them but what prevents people from supporting you. Once you understand these challenges you can provide support and develop content that can encourage people to fund-raise.

1. Fundraising is a lot of effort.

Fundraising is a big commitment, at least that is one of the reasons many people are reluctant to get involved even though this is not necessarily so.

It is therefore important to show potential fundraisers that while it can take a lot of time and effort to get involved in big events, there are lots of different ways to fundraise that require minimal effort and huge returns.

You can also make it easy for them by providing them with templates and other resources that makes it easy for them to fundraise for you. Invisible Children provide supporters with a letter they can download and send to relatives and friends, while many organisations provide fundraising packs that make it easy to get started fundraising. The easier that you make it the more likely you are to get people to fundraise for you.

2. They don’t understand the purpose of your cause

This seems a little obvious right? If visitors to your website cannot understand what you do then why would they support you.

It is important to be very clear about what you are fundraising for and why you need to money. This means having a clear outcome and demonstrating how you aim to achieve this.

3. They don’t understand why you need my money

You need to show clearly the importance of your work, why you need the money and the impact it have on the people you are helping.

Critically this involves showing potential supporters how you intend to use these funds and why this is essential. If possible demonstrate the implications if you the public fails to respond to this need.

4. They don’t trust that the money will go where it is needed

Part of demonstrating why you need people to fundraise for your cause is showing supporters the outcomes of your work and what you have already achieved with the support you have received so far.

Being honest and transparent about how you spend donations should be a huge priority to your organisation. Charity:water’s Dollars to Projects feature shows donors exactly how their donation will be used, how the projects work, and then allows donors to follow their donation to the completed project.

5.They don’t feel comfortable asking people for money

Even supporters who don’t want to ask for donations can raise money for charity by offering skills or services to people. Supporters can hold a yard sale and donate the proceeds. Host a dinner party and apply a small cover charge, do a bake sale, sell tickets to a webinar.

6. They don’t have any resources or anyone to ask for donations

There may be supporters who want to help but feel that they do not have the resources to do so. Thankfully, there are countless things that supporters can do that just require their time and talent rather than any money.

The best way to help people in this position to to show people that they only need to come up with an idea, tailored to their skills or talents, that don’t need them to spend any money or ask people to give their money away

You could babysit or cut lawns or sell your paintings or organise a musical performance that you can sell tickets to.

7. They don’t believe they can make a difference

Some supporters may not believe that raising money will make any substantial difference to the people they want to help. It is important to show people the impact they can have and how it makes a difference.

One way to do this is to show how even small sums of money can affect change by sharing with them how money is spent and how it has made a tangible difference to the people you help.

Through video and photo-sharing platforms, like Instagram, share inspiring stories of the individuals you help through their donations.